[Request] Increase ban limit

by **Jokesters** » Wed Nov 28, 2018 7:45 pm

Hi,

I would like to bring up the problem of the ban list number (currently 200) being too small. This is a problem due to the fact that once a nation is pushed off the list it could simply come back to the region to spam some and get banned again; this pushes another nation off the list and the cycle happens again, over and over while disrupting the community.

This could have two potential fixes such as: an increased limit (500 or more bans allowed), a moving limit aimed towards the population of the region (every 500 nations or so you could get 10-20 added to the limit of 200). This list has been a problem in bigger regions where the limit could reach on up to 2-3% of the population and constant spam is a problem in these regions.

by **Flanderlion** » Wed Nov 28, 2018 7:57 pm

Just adding on to this:

We've had to ban over 200 unique nations in the last 4 days, albeit many are from the same players who are spamming our RMB. The 2nd most recent one was one of the nations that returned after our banlist overflowed. This is with reducing our normal clearing of dodgy nation names (106 violations), and in the last week we've banned even more spammers and others attempting to ruin our RMB. As Jokesters said, it's nowhere near enough. It isn't just our region though, TWP has a full banlist, along with TEP, both fellow Feeders.

by **Frattastan IV** » Thu Nov 29, 2018 5:11 am

"Spam" is rulebreaking regardless of whether a nation is banned from the region.

200 is already large enough to allow the regional authorities to completely expel the active community of a feeder. I'd rather not increase it further just because some have trivial reasons to impose bans, or are facing a temporary crisis.

by **Jar Wattinree** » Thu Nov 29, 2018 6:43 am

Frattastan IV wrote:"Spam" is rulebreaking regardless of whether a nation is banned from the region.

200 is already large enough to allow the regional authorities to completely expel the active community of a feeder. I'd rather not increase it further just because some have trivial reasons to impose bans, or are facing a temporary crisis.

But that is part and parcel of the game, where you can be a benevolent ruler or a tinpot dictator, both applies to your nation and region.

This request is less about the Pacific than it is about the ban limit. The original limit was established to prevent a delegate in the pre-Influence days from emptying regions completely. The situation has changed since then.

The scalable limit would best in my opinion because the more nations that go down, so does the increase in bans. It is diminishing returns, but useful for regions dealing with sustained game-legal insurrections or invasion against their native government. Again, 3/5ths of the Feeders have full banlists.

by **Frattastan IV** » Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:34 am

If the ban limit is increased (to 500 or whatever) my expectation is that you will hit it again in a matter of weeks and return here to complain. There is no limit that could be satisfying to regions that routinely perform dozens of weekly bans in peacetime, unless the cap is brought to unreasonably high levels (over a thousand).

Also, trying to fill the banlist to get high-influence accidentally taken off it has been a legitimate tactic when fighting coups, and this would weaken it for minimal benefit.

by **Yokiria** » Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:41 am

Frattastan IV wrote:Also, trying to fill the banlist to get high-influence accidentally taken off it has been a legitimate tactic when fighting coups, and this would weaken it for minimal benefit.

Indeed. Increasing the ban limit would hurt Gameplay, and Gameplay is already hurting enough as it is.

by **Frattastan IV** » Thu Nov 29, 2018 8:27 am

For those interested, there was a similar discussion in 2013 with (similar) arguments about whether this would discourage puppet flooding/spamming, the role of the banlist limit in coups, whether it would allow highly damaging purges even with Influence, etc.

Clearly what we need is a Freaky Friday where Fratt becomes NPO Emperor and tries to manage spam with zero ejections! :^)

by **Jokesters** » Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:06 pm

Frattastan IV wrote:If the ban limit is increased (to 500 or whatever) my expectation is that you will hit it again in a matter of weeks and return here to complain. There is no limit that could be satisfying to regions that routinely perform dozens of weekly bans in peacetime, unless the cap is brought to unreasonably high levels (over a thousand).

Also, trying to fill the banlist to get high-influence accidentally taken off it has been a legitimate tactic when fighting coups, and this would weaken it for minimal benefit.

There is also the other option which would allow more bans for bigger regions who need it, while keeping it at 200 for smaller regions who don't need it.

by **The Notorious Mad Jack** » Fri Nov 30, 2018 4:45 am

Jokesters wrote:
Frattastan IV wrote:If the ban limit is increased (to 500 or whatever) my expectation is that you will hit it again in a matter of weeks and return here to complain. There is no limit that could be satisfying to regions that routinely perform dozens of weekly bans in peacetime, unless the cap is brought to unreasonably high levels (over a thousand).

Also, trying to fill the banlist to get high-influence accidentally taken off it has been a legitimate tactic when fighting coups, and this would weaken it for minimal benefit.

There is also the other option which would allow more bans for bigger regions who need it, while keeping it at 200 for smaller regions who don't need it.

It's quite clear that bigger regions can easily get bye without a bigger ban list. TNP only has 96 nations banned, TSP 52, the three sisters of Lazarus, Osiris and Balder only have 49, 35 and 22 banned respectively, and in all those cases a majority of those banned nations have ceased to exist, leaving plenty of room if they need it.

TEP's ban list is only full due to a player who keeps their huge number of puppets alive, but they were banjected 168 days ago, so they could easily find the room on their ban list if needed.

by **Cormactopia Prime** » Fri Nov 30, 2018 5:32 am

Hello. Three time Sinker Delegate. Utterly opposed to any ban list increase, as it would make it harder to liberate GCRs that are couped, and it just simply isn't necessary. Even during times of regional crisis, which I also experienced as a Sinker Delegate, the ban list can be kept up with good management.

by **Jokesters** » Fri Nov 30, 2018 2:32 pm

Cormactopia Prime wrote:Hello. Three time Sinker Delegate. Utterly opposed to any ban list increase, as it would make it harder to liberate GCRs that are couped, and it just simply isn't necessary. Even during times of regional crisis, which I also experienced as a Sinker Delegate, the ban list can be kept up with good management.

The current situation of bigger regions sometimes have problems where spammers coordinate their efforts, which a bigger ban list is needed, TP is currently experiencing right now. To push back on the liberate GCRs that are couped, you could use the ban the users that want to coup, to prevent the coup in the first place.

by **Lord Dominator** » Fri Nov 30, 2018 3:09 pm

Jokesters wrote:
Cormactopia Prime wrote:Hello. Three time Sinker Delegate. Utterly opposed to any ban list increase, as it would make it harder to liberate GCRs that are couped, and it just simply isn't necessary. Even during times of regional crisis, which I also experienced as a Sinker Delegate, the ban list can be kept up with good management.

The current situation of bigger regions sometimes have problems where spammers coordinate their efforts, which a bigger ban list is needed, TP is currently experiencing right now. To push back on the liberate GCRs that are couped, you could use the ban the users that want to coup, to prevent the coup in the first place.

Much as it would be nice to every single person who wants to coup, we don't.

by **Flanderlion** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 8:42 am

So there was a technical reason then to not increase it? That sucks, hoping that's changed over the years. My wild guess is that the game checks if it matches a banned nation and too many would make moving to a region with lots of nations take too long.

Given several of the other posters bar Fratt were part of the group doing the spamming, I'll take their opinions with a grain of salt.

Re the peacetime bit, that's the intended purpose of ejections. The purpose is to get rid of spammers and other undesirables. It's not like the other Feeders are at war, yet they fill theirs.

Sinkers kinda are irrelevant to compare as even spammers don't generally bother with them, and they've got a slower vibe. They're smaller with less unique players, and they don't get the new nations (spammers don't usually last long enough to CTE, then refounds and continue spamming)

by **Aclion** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 8:47 am

Flanderlion wrote:Given several of the other posters bar Fratt were part of the group doing the spamming, I'll take their opinions with a grain of salt.

Ah so by spam you mean criticism of the NPO, not actual spam.

by **Drop Your Pants** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 9:31 am

Aclion wrote:Ah so by spam you mean criticism of the NPO, not actual spam.

Flooding the region with countless puppets posting the same thing over and over until the ban list fills up and so they can start from the beginning again. Sounds like spam to me.

by **Bears Armed** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:14 am

Drop Your Pants wrote:
Aclion wrote:Ah so by spam you mean criticism of the NPO, not actual spam.

Flooding the region with countless puppets posting the same thing over and over until the ban list fills up and so they can start from the beginning again. Sounds like spam to me.

If it's the same small set of players every time, repeatedly offending, isn't this still something that the Mods will act against if asked?

by **The Notorious Mad Jack** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:43 am

Flanderlion wrote:Given several of the other posters bar Fratt were part of the group doing the spamming, I'll take their opinions with a grain of salt.

I'd very much like a retraction of this, because I wasn't.

by **Mohacian** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:46 am

It happened to me banned into a region i supposed to stay and a nation put me into an unkown region.

by **Cormactopia Prime** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:47 am

Flanderlion wrote:Given several of the other posters bar Fratt were part of the group doing the spamming, I'll take their opinions with a grain of salt.

I've posted on the Pacific's RMB exactly once. You banned me. I haven't been back.

At some point it would be nice if people from the Pacific would remember this is Technical, and not Gameplay. Leave your propaganda out of it.

by **Aclion** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:56 am

Drop Your Pants wrote:
Aclion wrote:Ah so by spam you mean criticism of the NPO, not actual spam.

Flooding the region with countless puppets posting the same thing over and over until the ban list fills up and so they can start from the beginning again. Sounds like spam to me.

If the people criticizing this request are really the same person that was spamming the RMB then that would mean they are evading their ban and WA multing. If this accusation were anything more then pure libel you would be filing a GHR about it, not accusing them in a tech thread.

by **Galiantus III** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 1:47 pm

I am going to suggest that there are many different reasons to ban a nation from a region, but sometimes banning is not the right tool for the job. If you are trying to defend against spam, there is no reason you should have to fill up your ban list. Instead, allow for more control over the RMB, by allowing us to block individual nations from posting there (Feature 1). I don't think this will make much of a difference in the propaganda war going on in The Pacific, since anyone could still just found a few nations and move in as they are blocked, but it ensures that their regional government (and every regional government) doesn't have to use their limited bans unnecessarily.

If this were done, I would argue for shrinking the size of the ban list to 100 to maintain the viability of tactics that involve pushing influential nations off the ban list. I also think residency or influence should at some point prevent blocking, but not end blocking (Feature 2).

There should also be an option for regions to share RMB blocks with regions they have embassies with. Example: Region A has an embassy with region B. Region A chooses the sharing option, but B does not. B blocks Testlandia, which in turn causes A to block Testlandia. A blocks Randomland, but Randomland is not blocked in B. Given that we have embassy posting, this naturally makes sense (Feature 3). This might also be a useful option for bans in general, especially for smaller regions who are never going to reach the ban limit anyways, and are more likely to need to ban someone that was already banned by one of their friends or allies (Feature 4).

by **Drop Your Pants** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 2:22 pm

Aclion wrote:If the people criticizing this request are really the same person that was spamming the RMB then that would mean they are evading their ban and WA multing. If this accusation were anything more then pure libel you would be filing a GHR about it, not accusing them in a tech thread.

GHR's were filed when it first started and it certainly helped for the obvious ones. But how do you tell if a nation is avoiding a region ban if its a new nation showing no connection to a previous one? If we GHR'd every spammer we'd get yelled at by a grumpy mod for frivolous reporting.

Not sure where you pulled the WA multing from, care to share?

by **Jar Wattinree** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 2:28 pm

Bears Armed wrote:
Drop Your Pants wrote:Flooding the region with countless puppets posting the same thing over and over until the ban list fills up and so they can start from the beginning again. Sounds like spam to me.

If it's the same small set of players every time, repeatedly offending, isn't this still something that the Mods will act against if asked?

re: Drop Your Pants' latest post, it is difficult to figure out which of the players are which puppet unless they leave identifying clues (which a few have done, and have since been GHR'd, but the majority had not), and GHRing every single one would earn us a mod yelling at us for frivolous reporting.

[Request] Increase ban limit

[Request] Increase ban limit

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